


Grass Widow

by havisham



Category: Oh Henry - The Civil Wars (Song), Original Work
Genre: Buried Alive, Detectives, Don't Have to Know Canon, F/M, Marriage, Names, Revenge, Southern Gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 21:05:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1793200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lone detective is dispatched to a small Southern town, trying to find out what happened to a man named Henry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grass Widow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViaLethe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/gifts).



> This wandered away from the original prompt quite a bit. I hope it's still acceptable though! 
> 
> Thank you to my wonderful beta.

I came into town looking for a man named Henry, who had too many last names to bother listing. Stanley, Clay, Allgood -- all fake, like the man. But he was always Henry, anyway. I had spoken to the client who wanted him found only once -- she mostly spoke to my boss. I was only supposed to be the boots on the ground, trying to find the details to a story that didn’t quite make sense.

A cop car flashed its lights at me before I even crossed the town limit. I admit, I was nervous, with my out-of-state license plate and my wrong accent and the wrong color of my skin. My parents had met during a protest in Washington, he was the son of Minnesotan farmers, a generation away from speaking only Norwegian, my mother was the only daughter of a wealthy black family in Saint Louis. There was a fortuitous Supreme Court decision a week before they met that made their union possible. They had my brother and I, and separated ten years after. 

You should see the looks people give you, growing up as a black kid named Jorgensen... 

Neither of my parents were particularly happy with my career choice, but honestly, I liked it just fine. I met a lot of different people -- a lot of _interesting_ people -- as a private detective that I wouldn’t have as a doctor or a lawyer. I made helluva lot less money at it too. 

And I shouldn’t be nervous -- after all, the bad old days were dead and buried, weren’t they? And I was just a humble detective, not much to look at and not much to fear. Hell, I didn’t even carry a gun. Wouldn’t know how to shoot it if I did have one.

Here was a new and interesting person I was going to meet: a police officer. I pulled over on a narrow shoulder shaded by some young oak trees. Beyond them was wrought-iron fence. Beyond that were rows and rows of graves.

The day was bright enough to hurt your eyes, even if you were wearing sunglasses (which I wasn’t -- my only pair had been stomped on by a suspect’s brat kid in my last case and I hadn’t had the money to replace them yet.) 

I rolled down the window and looked as innocent as possible. “Anything wrong, officer?” 

“License and registration,” was his crisp answer. After studying my papers for a while, the police officer, who was younger than I had thought at first, looked down at me from his long, thin nose. “Now what brings you here to our little town, Mister --?” 

“Just passing through,” I said with a grin. “Thinking about moving here.” 

He looked at me for a minute before he nodded and handed me back my papers. “It’s a nice little town. Quiet and peaceful.” 

_I bet._

I nodded. “There a place to stay? I saw a motel when I came off the interstate, but…” 

“Mrs. Baker rents out rooms on a weekly basis. She might have some available.” 

“Thanks, Officer…” 

“Andy Andrews,” he said, wincing. 

“Huh. Well, thanks for that, Officer Andrews.” I didn’t make any remark about the meanness of of Officer Andrews’ parents. I bet he got that a lot. 

“No problem,” he said gloomily, thumped on the top of the car, and stepped away. 

I drove on until I hit main street and found a likely place to start looking. The Sugar Bowl Cafe was small and hot, with a slow fan turning overhead. Its patrons hardly flicked their eyes to my direction, although the waitress did roll her eyes when I ordered a cup of coffee. I took a look at the day’s news paper. Apparently, a barn fire from a week ago was still front-page news. It felt like I had slipped almost fifty years back in time. Hell, time itself seemed to have congealed into a slow, honey-like consistency.

I sipped my hot coffee and silently sweltered. Then I asked the waitress -- an older woman with tight, blonde curls and a weary, heat-flushed expression -- where Mrs. Baker’s boarding house was. 

The boarding house wasn’t too far from the cafe -- it was a small town, nothing was too far from anywhere else -- and when I knocked on the door, it opened for me with a soft gust of air. It smelled like lavender, with a hint of mildew. I coughed and called out for Mrs. Baker. For a minute there, I wondered if I was going to get back to the motel off the interstate when I heard a loud sigh coming from the gloom of the house.  
“Young man,” said the tiniest woman I have ever seen, “close your mouth.” 

“No need,” I said, closing it. “Do you have some rooms for rent?” 

She frowned and folded her hands over her stomach. “I charge by week,” she said. “And I don’t allow visitors after seven.” 

“That’s all right,” I said. “I don’t expect to have any.” 

* 

A week went past, as slowly as if it had melted. 

In that week, I had just about exhausted all my options. My landlady, Mrs. Baker, was a notorious gossip, but she clammed up real fast when I tried to steer the conversation to any handsome travelling men who might have come through here, say, seven to ten years ago. She knew a lot of Henrys, all right, but not the right one, not the one who fit the photograph that I kept folded in my pocket. Henry was a handsome man, strikingly so. If anyone did see him, he wasn’t the kind you’d forget about. 

It was the same with everyone I talked to. They were friendly -- to a point -- and willing to talk (a lot), but no one knew a thing about Henry.

I reviewed the names in the cemetery and found no Henry had died any later than twenty years ago. Then I went to the other cemetery. Same thing. Then the other one. Same. 

I was on the brink of calling it quits and rolling out of town when an idea hit me that was so blindingly obvious that I was mad at myself for nothing thinking of it earlier. I left the Sugar Bowl while the waitress was in mid-sentence and made my way to the public library. 

The library was thankfully cool and dim, compared to the heat and dust from the outside. It wasn’t a big building, by any means, but it was neat, and well-maintained. The sole librarian was pretty woman of about thirty-two or so. Her red hair, which must have been fiery in her youth was already fading into a tawny gold. She also had the sweetest voice I’d ever heard in anyone, ever. 

I damn near floated away when I came in for the first time and heard her reading aloud to some kids. I waited patiently for her to finish and ask my question. “Miss Joy,” I said, after reading her nametag. “Where do you keep your microfiche?”

Miss Joy wrinkled her smooth brow. “You can just call me Joy. And I don’t know that we have one, Mr. --?” 

“Jorgensen,” I said quickly. “You do keep older newspapers?”

“Jorgensen,” she echoed, faintly puzzled. I smiled at her, to put her at ease. She smiled back, a little cautiously, as if she wasn’t quite used to the expression. 

“The newspapers are in the basement,” she said, showing me a door leading to it.

I swallowed. Have I mentioned that I’m not at all fond of narrow spaces? Or the dark? Well, it didn’t matter. Anything for the job. The newspapers were kept in long boxes, organized by year. I thought that, to be safe, I should start looking at papers from fifteen years ago. I was looking for anything -- names, dates, announcements. Especially engagement or wedding announcements. 

My information about Henry led me to believe that he had been married, and given that his known phone call (to a pay phone just outside the police station -- another dead end) ended here, it wasn’t such a bad assumption to think his wife was still here. And if she was a local girl, someone would have mentioned her wedding -- especially to an outsider like Henry. 

The time slipped by quickly in that basement, and I barely looked up when I heard a polite cough from the top of the stairs. It was Joy, who wanted to tell me that the library was closing in fifteen minutes. I came up the stairs and thanked her. She asked me where I was going afterwards. 

“To the Sugerbowl, for dinner,” I replied. 

“Oh yes,” she said. “Ask for Michaela’s pies. They’re pretty good.” 

I told her I would. (And I did. They really were.) 

 

The next day, I went back, and the day after that. 

I don’t know why I lingered -- I knew there were other leads I could find.

Well, that’s not true, is it? I had a pretty good idea. I liked Joy, and I wanted to be around her.

There was mark on her finger, where a wedding band had once been, but she never spoke about her husband and I never saw any pictures of him and her at her desk. No one called her anything but Joy. From bits and pieces of conversation I happened to overhear -- all right, I was standing on a seat of toilet in the men’s bathroom, listening through a vent at the gossip that was filtering from the women’s bathroom. I learned that Joy lived with her brother, a vet, in rundown old mansion at the edge of town. Her family had been rich at one time, but that was no longer the case. Word was that they would have to sell sometime and John Bennet, owner of the local Savings and Loan had an eye on buying the place. 

What chances he had of success I didn’t get to find out because just then someone came into the bathroom and I had to duck down into my stall. Of course, it was only then that my shoes slipped on the porcelain and I banged my shin hard against the wall of the stall. When I got out, cursing, there was no one else in the room. Figures. 

Another day went past, I turned up nothing. I climbed up the basement stairs in a terrible state of glumness. Now, I was aware that as detectives went, I wasn’t on par with the great ones, or even the good ones. But it was hard for me to accept that a simple missing persons assignment was defeating me so thoroughly. It was a joke around the offices of Superior Detective Agency that I couldn’t find my way out of a paper bag -- much less anyone else. 

It was true that I was better at writing polite but firm letters to clients who had proved recalcitrant about settling their accounts with us, but my work showed results. Sometimes. Anyway, I was pretty sure I was assigned this job as a joke -- but I was determined to do right anyway. 

The case had started when Henry’s -- cousin? sister? (she had declined to say) had come in and asked if we could find out what had happened to him. The case was a low-priority -- there wasn’t much interest in finding a man who had, most likely, skipped town to avoid his responsibilities. It had taken me some time -- some careful time trolling the city’s seedier bars, flashing around the picture I had of Henry -- before one of the regulars at Frank’s Tropical Bar recognized him, and was able to tell me the name of a town Henry had mentioned as being his. 

“Mister Jorgensen?” Joy had opened the door and looked down at me, the glow from behind her giving her hair a nimbus of light. “Are you all right? You seem … tired?” 

I shook my head sharply and sprang up the rest of the stairs. “No, I’m all right. The library closing soon?” 

She gave me a wry look. “You have it.” 

“Well, back to Mrs. Baker’s I go. With luck, she’ll make that meatloaf of hers -- it’s more sawdust than meat, but beggers, you know, Miss Joy, can’t be choosers.” 

Joy hesitated for a moment and then said, “Well, you can come have dinner with me.” She raised her hands before I could protest. “I’m afraid it’s all leftovers today, but I promise, no sawdust.” 

“Sorry,” I said, abashed. “I didn’t mean to force an invitation from you. I’m kidding about Mrs. Baker’s cooking. She does fine.” 

“No, I insist,” Joy said and that was that. 

* 

The house was an old one and must have been, at one time, quite impressive. However, the elements and time had worked upon it so that -- well, in the gloominess of night, it seemed practically spooky. The twisted oaks, dripping with Spanish moss, the faded red brick, the sagging pouch that looked like open maw… I blinked, but it was all still there. 

“It needs a little bit of work,” Joy said cheerfully, as she got out of the car. “But it’s much better inside, come on in.” 

I followed her onto the porch, which creaked alarmingly under our weight. She rummaged in her bag for moment before fishing out her keys with a triumphant sigh. When she got in, she flipped the switch, calling up the stairs for her brother. “John? Are you here? I’ve brought someone for dinner. Come down when you’re ready.” 

There was thump, somewhere upstairs, and Joy nodded and turned to me, smiling. “My brother John likes to have some warning before he meets anyone new -- he was -- well, nevermind. I hope that’s all right?” 

“It’s fine,” I said, smiling back at her. I was beginning to regret agreeing to come to this spook-house, but somehow Joy’s smile, so genuine, made me reconsider my reconsideration. 

She was right about the inside of the house, especially the kitchen, which was dated, but clearly well-maintained. The knobs mirrored your reflection back at you, and the yellow light of the electric lamps gave the room a warm atmosphere. 

“You thirsty?” Joy asked, opening the fridge. “We have some beer or Coke, if that’s more your speed.” 

“I’ll have a beer, thank you,” I said, looking out the window over the sink. It was a cloudy night, with the moonlight flitting uncertainly over the bushes and trees... and gravestones… 

I peered closer, my hands clutching at the basin. “There’s a graveyard out there.” 

“Oh yes,” Joy said, coming next to me. She offered me a beer, which I took with steady hands. (I think.) “This town’s full of graves. The Cherokee Indians, when they were here, named this place ‘the land of the widows’, and history seems to have bore them out. After the war, they set up a cemetery just down the road from here. Over there is the Merritt family plot -- hasn’t been used in fifty years or so. My folks are buried over at Parkwood.” 

“Must’ve caused a stir,” I said, turning away from the window.

“Oh, it did,” Joy said lightly, offering me a bottle-opener, which I took. “No one forgets anything around here.” 

“The smaller the town, the longer the memory,” I said, trying to sound knowledgeable. I had always lived, more or less, in the city. Coming into a place like this was like landing on a different planet. But Joy nodded and looked thoughtful. 

“So,” I said hopefully. “Dinner?” 

Dinner turned out to be reheated pot roast and a side of baked macaroni and cheese. The meat was a bit tough and the cheese from the macaroni burned the roof off my mouth, but in comparison to what I had been eating lately, everything was pure ambrosia. Half-way through the meal, Joy’s brother came down. Up close, you could see that there was a strong resemblance between them, the same narrow jaw, their wide-eyed gaze, unusual for being so dark.

His hands shook a little, when he asked for and received a bowl of peas.

“What do you do, Mr. Jorgensen, if I may ask?” John said, his voice rough with apparent disuse. He ignored the look his sister gave him, and I took the opportunity to take a big sip of beer, considering my options.

“I’m an investigator, for Global Life Insurance,” I said after it seemed that I needed to say something. “I’m just down here to confirm some facts about a client of mine.” 

“Maybe we can help,” Joy said, looking up. She had been picking at her food, before. There was a slightly, excited note in her voice now. “These small towns, you know. Everyone knows everybody’s business.” 

John grunted and seemed to agree. 

“Sadly, second-hand testimony won’t cut it,” I said with a sad shake of my head. 

“Your loss,” John said, and the siblings shared a look that I couldn’t quite make out. 

After dinner, Joy followed me out to my car. She asked me if I thought I was fit to drive. They had a guest bedroom, if I had need for it. I shook my head. 

“I’m solid as a rock,” I assured her. 

“Well,” she said, “if you’re sure…” 

Before I could assure her further of my fitness to drive, Joy leaned down a little (she was perhaps, an inch or two taller than I was) and kissed me. I had no idea what to do. I wasn’t in the business of getting kissed, especially by beautiful redheaded librarians. One kiss was enough to turn my head. I knew I should do the suave thing and kiss her back, or at least deliver a quip to show that this kind of thing happened to me all the time. 

All I did was gape at her like a fool and then, chokingly, I thanked her for a lovely evening. Then I got into my car before she could say anything and drove out of there like a bat out of Hell. 

I only had a night to agonize over my stupidity. The next day, I found Henry. Or, rather, the woman who had married him.  
* 

The newspaper I had been looking for was from seven years ago, and announced, among other things, a vicious wasp invasion of the local elementary school. The announcement section was stuffed with obituaries, mostly, and one wedding. The section that detailed the wedding had been carefully cut out of the newspaper, leaving no trace of what it had it contained. I looked at it dumbly for a moment, before the wheels in my head began to turn. I got up from my nest of newspapers and began to set them as right as I could. Then I went up the stairs and peeked out. Joy was nowhere in sight, but her assistant was checking one of their patrons out. My coast was clear. 

I made my way quickly and calmly to the adult fiction section, and went immediately to where I knew a particular book must be. As luck would have it, it was there, a copy _The Gift of the Magi and Other Stories_ , by -- you guessed it -- O. Henry. 

If my suspicions were right, the person I was looking for had probably felt guilty about cutting the newspaper. Maybe they felt better, knowing that the clipping was still in the library, somewhere. 

There was nothing between the pages, but the book pocket, behind the card, held an extra piece of paper. I wasn’t surprised at what I read. Speaking of which -- a shadow fell over me and I looked up. Joy looked down at me, her face carefully blank. 

“A joke, Mrs. Sinclair?” 

“I suppose. But it’s Ms. Merritt,” Joy said coolly. “I go by my maiden name these days. Do you mind?” 

She held out her hand for the book, which I gave back to her. I kept the wedding announcement, which described in glowing terms the love between Joy Merritt, town beauty, and Henry Sinclair, the good-looking drifter who had stolen her heart. 

Joy disappeared again and returned with her hat and her coat. “I’ve taken the day off. Will you come with me?” 

“Sure thing, honey,” I said, “but I have to make a phone-call first.” She gave me a tetchy look, but waited by the door while I sprinted across the street and dialled my boss’ number. Gladys, the one secretary at Superior who didn’t hate the sight of me, answered the call. 

“Gladys,” I said breathlessly, “is the boss in?” 

“No, you know he doesn’t come in before noon on Fridays. What’s up? Did you get a break in the case?” 

“Yeah, yeah, write this down, will ya? I need the records of any marriages and divorces that Joy Merritt, that’s M-E-R-R-I-T-T, ever had. Or any children, come to think of it. She’s a Georgia resident.” 

“You have her address?” 

I gave it to her. Gladys hummed as she jotted the information down. “She married to this Henry guy?” 

“If it was in the papers, it’s gotta be true, right?” 

“You think she stuffed him?” 

“Got no evidence of that,” I said, hedging my bets a little. 

“If a man did me like he did her, I’d kill him,” Gladys said and popped a bubble gum in my ear. I winced. 

“Be that as it may, we have no evidence one way or the other,” I said. “Tell the boss what I found. And if I don’t come back…” 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she said with a sigh. Despite everything, Gladys was a caring sort of girl. “You’re just the kind of idiot who’d lose his head over a pretty suspect.”

“Who me?” I said. A car honked and I turned to see Joy waiting for me outside, her car idling in the bus route lane in front of the phone booth. “See ya, Gladys.” 

*

She took me to a place I didn’t recognize, where the asphalt gave way to dirt and gravel. I kept sneaking glances at her purse, which was wedged beside her seat and mine. Was there a pistol in there? What the the last thing Henry saw? 

Finally, she pulled off the road, such as it was, into a little field in the middle of nowhere. She took a deep breath and turned to me and said, “You got a light?” 

“I don’t smoke,” I said. “My kid brother had asthma and I didn’t like him wheezing when he was around me.” 

“Noble of you. Mind if I do it now?” 

“Go ahead,” I said, and she began to rifle in her bag. Finally, she found a book of matches, as well a half-full pack of cigarettes. The heat of the afternoon was already rising, and even when we rolled down the windows, the car was stifling. Finally, losing patience, I opened the door and got out. I started to walk towards a big, century oak that dominated the other end of the field. I heard the crunch of gravel behind me as Joy followed. I sat on one raised root and she on another. 

Neither of us spoke for some time. 

Finally, after a deep breath of smoke and slow exhale, Joy asked me if I had ever been married. 

“No,” I said. I hadn’t been engaged either. Or had a serious girlfriend. I impressed women in the same way that I impressed men -- I didn’t. I also didn’t mind my lack of success very much. After all, in my line of work, I got to see first hand how quickly love could sour. (Plus, I read a lot.) 

I was better off the way I was, I told myself, trying not to look too deeply into Joy Merritt’s dark eyes. 

She looked at me and said, “Ever been in love?” 

“I thought -- at the time, yes.” 

“Love drives you crazy,” she said, starting on another cigarette. “I met Henry when I was nineteen and feeling like I was about to burst out from my own skin. I had come back from my schooling and now everyone -- my ma, my pa, my aunts, my uncles, everyone in town wanted to know when I was going go get married. I was nineteen! I barely knew who I was, and they wanted me to get hitched and turn into someone else entirely. Well. So I did.” 

She grinned, and there was something wicked in that grin. I know I should have disapproved of that, but I couldn’t quite seem to. I leaned against the tree and listened. 

“Henry had passed through town a few times now. He was always selling something. A different thing, each time. He was … handsome. Charming. He must have had only one suit, but he always seemed put-together. He was a man, not like the boys I used to go to school with. Not like that toffee-nosed John Bennett, who looked down my top the one time I agreed to go to the movies with him.” 

She sighed and rubbed her temples. “I thought I was in love! I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I thought I would die if I couldn’t have him. When I saw him talking to other girls, I got so mad I thought I could snap them all in half. Starting with him.” 

“Hm.” 

She glared at me. “I admit, I was intense, but Henry -- well, he liked to encourage me.” 

“But you married him, so you won in a way.” 

“In that way, yes,” she agreed, with a cynical gleam in her eye. I pulled nervously on my collar. Joy was far from the demure librarian I had first marked her for. I didn’t quite know why my pulse was racing for, but it was racing for something. 

“The whole town showed up for the wedding, and there were bets laid on how long it would last.” 

There was a brief silence. _Don’t say it_ , I told myself. _Don’t do it._

“How long did it last?” I asked. 

“Three years, almost,” Joy said. “And then people began to come around, telling me that Henry had been seen with so-and-so at all hours of the night. Every day, there would be a different story. I couldn’t stand it, of course, but Henry was hardly home and more I thought about it, the madder I got. Finally, when he came home, I …” 

I asked her, “Where is Henry now? No matter what he did, his family have a right to know where his body is.” 

She stared at me for a moment. “Oh my God! I didn’t kill him! Have you -- did you think I was a murderer this entire time? Are you a cop?” 

“I’m a private detective,” I said gravely. “What did you think I was?” 

“I don’t know, some kook. Harmless enough, but my taste in men is a little suspect… got any ID on you?” 

I felt for my wallet, in my back pocket, and handed over my ID from Superior Detective Agency, which stated my name (Op. Jorgensen), my qualifications (nothing in particular, but stated in a way that seemed authoritative), and the date issued (about three years ago).

Joy gave it a cursory look before handing it back. 

“It could be fake,” she said. 

“And you could have killed Henry in a fit of rage,” I said, putting my wallet back in my pocket. “I’m registered with the state, you can call them and check.” 

“I didn’t kill him. I told him to leave and never come back. And he did.” 

“Listen, doll-face --” I began to say, but that was when she slapped me. I touched my cheek and looked at her in disbelief. 

“Don’t start that Bogart shit with me,” she said. “You can’t carry it off. I told you the truth and now you can go and tell your boss all about it.” 

“I can’t,” I said, quite honestly. “You’re my ride.” 

It was a tense ride back into town. Joy dropped me off at Mrs. Baker’s and left without another word. Meanwhile, Gladys had been ringing Mrs. Baker’s telephone nearly off the hook for the entire time that I had been away. Mrs. Baker, in a towering rage, thrust the receptor to me and hissed as she passed that long-distance calls cost extra. 

“There you are! I thought you were dead for sure!” Gladys said as soon as I got on the line.

“Nice to hear from you too, Gladys,” I said. “Did you give my message to the boss?” 

“Yeah, I did. And there’s talk about pulling you from the case. Well, I say talk, but it’s a foregone conclusion. You should get your walking papers tomorrow.” 

“That’s not fair,” I said. “I’ve worked this case from every angle, I can’t give up now, I …” 

“Fool. It’s the client. She came in today and said she didn’t want us to pursue the case anymore.” 

I felt my stomach sink to the vicinity of my knees. “She came in today? Did -- did the boss call her? Did he tell her that I had found Henry’s wife?” 

“Such private conversations wouldn’t be witnessed by a secretary at Superior Detective Agency,” Gladys said crisply. But then, quieter, “You think something’s fishy?” 

“I think this whole thing stinks to high heaven,” I said. “I’ll come back all right. My letter of resignation going to be on the boss’ desk first thing on Monday morning. Good night, Gladys.” 

“Oh brother,” Gladys said, and hung up. 

That night, I didn’t get much sleep. I struggled with the window for a while, trying to get to open more than a few inches. It wouldn’t budge. I pushed it harder until, all the sudden, it jarred and slammed upwards, leaving a spray of dust and chips of paint for me to breathe in. Once I had stopped coughing, though, I was able to appreciate the cool breeze that came through the mosquito netting. Outside, the night was quiet except for the hum of insects. 

I decided to head out, and find some of these people who had known Henry Sinclair, who had married Joy Merritt and disappeared. It wasn’t that hard to sneak past Mrs. Baker’s room on the first floor, although I heard the rumble of a heavy snore rattle the little figurines that lined the front table. 

I opened the front door and let the cool night air surround me and swallow me whole. 

* 

In a town as small as this, there was only one place to go to if you wanted some after-hours fun. It was a few miles down a dark country-road. I wouldn’t have even known of its existence except I had had a fleeting glimpse of it driving past it this afternoon with Joy. The place was in the form of an old-fashioned log house, and it didn’t even have a name, as far as I could see, only a neon-light at the window that advertised beer. Inside, it was crowded, full of shouts and cigarette-smoke. It got marginally less loud as soon as I stepped in though, and I felt many eyes follow me as I went up the bar. 

The barkeeper was a greasy-looking man of forty-five or so. He sported a weak, reddish beard and mustache, otherwise he was completely unremarkable. He asked what I would have -- I ordered a beer and I got one. Meanwhile, the noise around me had picked up again. But the crowd hadn’t forgotten about me. Someone plunked themselves at the stool next to me and whispered into my ear. “Hey.” 

I looked over to a woman, dark and slight, smiling at me. She wore a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans -- she couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

“Hi,” I said, smiling back. 

“Lemme guess who you are,” she said. “Jorgensen, the insurance guy. Am I right?” 

“Right as rain,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Lisa Cleery,” she said. “I went to high school with Johnny Merritt. He was two years ahead of me. What’re you here for?” 

I coughed. Most people weren’t that direct, but I knew Lisa was asking something that everyone was curious about. “I have a client who wants to find someone -- someone who has come into a bit of money. A man named Henry Sinclair, do you know him?” 

“Why do you think he’d be here?” Lisa asked. 

“I had word that he had kin here,” I said. 

“Not kin,” said someone else, a man older than Lisa, with a face like a thundercloud. “Henry wasn’t from here.” 

“He was married here, though?” 

“To Joy Merritt, the librarian now that Miss Abigail’s retired,” Lisa spoke up. With a small note of pride, she said, “I was one of her bridesmaids.” 

“Only because you whined so long that she had to take you -- weren’t you Johnny’s girlfriend back then?” asked someone else. It was difficult to see who it was. There was a knot of people gathered around Lisa and I. Even the barkeeper had stopped wiping the bar to listen to what we had to say.

“It was some wedding. The whole town was there. They wrote their own vows, pissed off Pastor Higgins, but good.” 

“They promised always, always to be true,” Lisa said, a tad wistfully. 

Someone snorted sharply. “Well, that didn’t last long, did it?” 

I started, carefully, “Was Henry…?” 

“Henry liked company,” Lisa said. “He never liked being alone, he said it reminded him of his childhood in Montana. All those empty months, never seeing a soul except those of your own family. Or animals.” 

“Henry liked women, and he wasn’t too picky about whether they were married or not,” said someone else. 

“Henry liked leaving unpaid bar tabs,” offered the barkeeper with a sigh. “He was fun guy when he was here, but boy did he leave a mess behind him.” 

“Henry was the most worthless, thieving, whoring -- excuse me, Lisa -- and vicious son of a bitch ever to be born,” said the first man, who had only gotten angrier in the passing minutes. Forget a thundercloud, he was a storm now. He looked at me and narrowed his eyes. “He wasn’t one of us. And he damn near broke Joy Merritt’s heart when he abandoned her.” 

There were murmurs of agreement all around. 

“So, he isn’t here?” I said, trying to sound neutral as possible. 

“With luck, he’d dead by now,” said the man, and with an angry huff, he turned and left, pushing his way out of the crowd. I watched him go and then turned my attention back to Lisa. 

“What was that about?” 

“John Bennet was sweet on Joy for years before Henry came around,” Lisa said. “He’s still sore that Joy never gave him the time of day after Henry came around.” 

I began to get up now, satisfied with the story I had heard. What change I had in my pocket paid for my beer, and for Lisa’s one as well. She followed me out of the bar, an action that didn’t go unnoticed by the rest of the crowd. Everyone else avoided my gaze when I went past. I sighed inwardly. The last thing I needed was some yokel who decided that he wanted a piece of me. I stood straight and kept walking, and didn’t stop until I had made it back to my car. 

I realized that Henry and I had something in common after all. We were both of us outsiders here, and always would be. 

It was then Lisa spoke, startling me. I’d forgotten she was there, almost. 

She said, softly, “He wasn’t all bad, you know. He couldn’t be, could he, if someone as smart as Joy loved him?” She cast her eyes cast down to her shoes and looked awfully young. 

“Love can make you do crazy things,” I said. _And make smart people do dumb things._ “Does Henry visit you, sometimes?”

Lisa was quiet for a moment before she gave a reluctant nod. “Not here. There’s a place in Monroesville, two towns over, where we meet sometimes. I might marry him, if he’d divorce Joy. I’d do it too,” she said, her last words defiant. 

I shrugged. “From what I’ve seen, Henry’s not that great marriage material.” An understatement of the century, maybe, but I meant it. 

“How much money did he inherit? Can you tell me?” 

I shook my head. “Sorry. Listen, if you hear from him in the next day or two, call me, all right? I’m staying at Mrs. Baker’s house. You know the number?” 

Lisa nodded and I got in the car. The last time I looked back, she was a ghost imprint against the dark. 

*

The next day, I crawled out of bed at almost four o’clock. I felt disoriented, and the pounding in at the back of my temples didn’t help much. I hadn’t really drunk that much, last night, had I? I honestly don’t remember drinking anything. I got up from bed and looked around. There were clothes and papers scattered around the room. I gathered up my clothes and shaving kit and padded down the hall to the bathroom. 

When I came back to my room, I set about cleaning it -- which mostly involved stuffing my clothes into my suitcase and my files into my briefcase. By the time I had gotten everything downstairs and ready to go, it was almost evening. Haggling with Mrs. Baker about how much I owed her took more time -- she wanted to charge me for the night, I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. 

I was loading the back of car when Joy drove by, slowly, and stopped in front of the house. She took her sunglasses off and looked at me quizzically. “You’re going?” 

I winced. “I have to. I’m off the case.” 

She mulled this over and the looked at me. “Do you really think I’m a murderer?” 

_Well,_ I thought, _I have a pretty good idea that Henry is still alive, so no._

I said, “No, I don’t.”

We started at each other for a moment before Joy said, “Get in.” 

“I have my car -- I don’t think Mrs. Baker would take it too kindly if just left it here…” 

“Oh, right. Well, follow me, then.” 

This time, I had no objections. 

*

The Starlight All-night Motel was separated from the highway by a narrow strip of land, that rose abruptly at the very last moment. The building itself shook, occasionally, at the passing of a big truck barreling down the road. The receptionist was a slouching, sleep-eyed man who perked up considerable once he saw Joy looking over my shoulders.

“We charge nightly,” he said, leering. 

“That’s fine,” I said, shoving the guestbook more roughly at him. 

He glanced down at it. “Have a good night, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” 

“Thank you,” Joy said sweetly, and as I turned to leave, I heard a small crash and the tinkle of broken glass. As I turned back, alarmed, to look at Joy, the receptionist said, weakly, “It’s all right, it’s all right. Just a glass broke. Check-out’s at noon.” 

“You’re dangerous,” I said to her as we made our way up a set of stairs to our room. 

Joy snorted quietly and shook her head. 

We had room on the ground floor -- at this time of night, the receptionist had said, with a significant look in his eyes, he put everyone on the ground floor in order to not disturb the other guests with the sound of people trooping up and down the stairs. I fumbled with the keys, trying to get in. Joy was leaning against my back, swaying a little. When I finally got the door open, she nearly fell over me into the room. I caught her at the last second and she twisted around in my arms, her eyes bright, reflecting the neon of Starlight All-night sign. 

“This might be a mistake,” she murmured, biting her lip. 

“We can back out now -- I promise I won’t hold you to anything,” I said, getting in and flipping on the switch. The room wasn’t much to look at. The room was dominated by the bed, with a little desk at the side, so light that it could have been made of balsa wood. The walls were puce and there were heavy curtains, a red and black plaid. A television that showed nothing but snowy pictures was on one end of the room, and the door leading to the bathroom was on the other. Above the bed, there was a picture of a duck and some hunters, indifferently arranged in a muted purple landscape. 

As far as motel rooms went, I’d say it was about average. 

“No,” Joy said, coming and closing the door behind her with a bang. “I want to.” 

I turned to her, surprised. “Really? Why? I’m not…” I was embarrassed, but determined to continue. “I know I’m not much to look at --” 

“You’re fine,” she said, with a wave of her hand. 

I grinned. “Gee, thanks, but you’re still --” 

“You’re better than fine. And I don’t care about _him_ ,” she said, and I could see that a red-hot core of anger still burned in her, as far as Henry was concerned. Awfully angry, for someone who didn’t care. “He listened to all my pleas, and my begging, and he still did what he liked. I was glad to see the back of him.” 

“But -- I’m just an outsider like he was --” 

“Oh please, kiss me,” she pleaded, and I complied. It was a short, nerve-wracking kiss before she pulled away and looked at me critically.“Do you have a rubber?”

I nodded. There were a few of them were stuck in the back of my suitcase, put there more out of some forlorn hope rather than the expectation of sexual gratification.

Joy smiled. 

“Good,” she said, and took one of out her purse. “I wasn’t sure that you would think of it.”

“Joy, you mistake me,” I said sincerely. “I think about it a lot.” 

She smirked at me, and I smirked back. 

“So I see,” she said. 

From then on, things started to happen very quickly. Joy took the lead -- not that she ever lost it, not during our time together, anyway, and navigated me towards the bed. She pushed me back on to the mattress, and I frantically tried to unbutton my shirt. Joy pulled her dress over her head and shimmied out of her slip.

I wanted to touch her everywhere, to please her, to keep her. 

I knew I couldn’t, I knew it but I tried anyway. 

*

“Now don’t moan like that, baby, it isn’t dignified,” Joy said as she pulled away. “Imagine if the neighbors heard.” 

“There’s no neighbors here,” I said, reaching for her again. “None that I care about, anyway.” 

She got up from the bed, swaying slightly, and began to hunt for a cigarette. I stayed where I was, but I looked up with interest. There weren’t any in her purse nor in his pockets or anywhere else for that matter. Eventually, she gave up and dropped the jacket she was looking through. 

She made a face. “This carpet feels sticky...” 

I laughed. “People don’t pick these places for the decor.” 

“And why do they pick it?” Joy asked, getting on the bed and crawling toward me. 

“Because people come here to do things they’re ashamed of doing at home,” I said, catching her, wrapping my arms around her. She pushed me away, making a face before I kissed her again. 

“I’m still married, you know,” she said. 

“I don’t care,” I said, sincerely. 

“I do,” she said. “And the shoe’s on the other foot now.” She considered for a moment, before saying, “I thought it would feel… I thought I would feel more.”

“I’m not Henry,” I said. “Not that Henry, anyway.” 

She mouthed the name and then stared at me. “What?” 

“I’m Henry Jorgensen,” I said, shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you.” 

“Oh, you _horrible_ man,” Joy said, before she burst out laughing. 

“Just my fucking luck,” she muttered under her breath. 

“That’s why they wanted me to come down here, to mess with me,” I said, by way of apology. “There weren’t any other Henrys in the office besides me.”

“Who…” Joy closed her mouth and seemed to be thinking very hard. “How much can you tell me?” 

“I can tell you anything,” I said, stretching out as much as the cramped queen bed and Joy would let me. 

“Who was looking for him? Henry never said he had any family.” 

“It was a woman. She was older, but well-preserved, as they say. Rich too, judging from the white-glove treatment she got from the boss… But Joy, now I don’t think she was looking for Henry. I think she was looking for you.” 

“Me?” Joy looked at me in disbelief. “What could she want with me?” 

I shrugged. Information? Revenge? Something more personal than all of that?

“Maybe nothing,” I said. 

“Maybe something. But Henry -- my Henry, he didn’t have anything. I don’t think he owned anything besides that convertible of his, and single suit before he married me. He had to borrow a tuxedo he got married in.” 

“Yeah,” I said, uncomfortable at the thought of her Henry, although I knew well enough that I was the interloper here. “Look. Get some sleep. We have the whole night -- I’ll wake you in enough time for you to get back and not be missed.” 

Joy sighed and pressed her face against the pillow. “Those who notice these things already did, I’m sure.” 

I was getting used to all these sleepless nights. When I was sure Joy was asleep, I got up and dressed, and went to the bathroom. It was tiled in a sickly yellow color, which was echoed in the paint and in the shower curtain. I turned on the water and began to wash my face. The walls were so thin that you could hear the goings-on of other people in the motel. Someone above me was talking loudly. Farther away, a baby was crying. Someone opened a door, their steps echoed down the concrete walkway. 

Washing up was the only time when I got a good look at myself. I never particularly liked what I saw, but I lacked the will to change much about it myself. There were lines in the corners of my mouth, they showed up whenever I laughed or frowned. In a few years, they’d be permanent. I looked down and sighed. I had never been what you’d call athletic at all, but now it seemed all to be catching up with me. I looked up again to the mirror -- was my hair thinner than it had been before? 

Suspect taste, or not, I didn’t know why Joy would have me and I didn’t think she’d have me again. 

There was a small noise, one that wasn’t coming from outside. I tensed, wondering if something had happened to Joy. I opened the door, looking out into the dark of the motel room. “Joy?” 

Then, something came toward me, a face I recognized, whose picture I had shown to dozens of disinterested people. It was a handsomer face than mine, but I didn’t expect any different. But I didn’t expect him -- here. 

“What the hell?” I said and I was shoved back, hard. My arm hit the door as I fell, and the back of my head hit the tiled floor. I thought was looking at death, and he raised a pipe and I was gone. 

* 

I woke up, against all expectations. My head hurt and my mouth was full of blood. I tried to get up, but all I did was bang my head against a rough wooden wall. There were walls around me, like I’d been stuffed inside a closet. It was hot and the air was close. I could hear the blood run through my ears and I knew, exactly, where I was. 

I felt around, hoping, praying that -- yes, yes, the wood felt flimsy, cheap. Not a very expensive coffin, then. 

I never liked small, enclosed spaces. Back at Superior, where my office was the size of a postage stamp, the only way I could stand it was if I kept the door open. It was also convenient when I could have shouting matches with Gladys. Yes, I thought, think about Gladys. She’d be annoyed to hear that I died in this way, if she did hear it… 

Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck._

I took a deep breath -- and then regretted it. How much oxygen did I have left? Did it seem like the walls were closing in on me? Had they brushed so close to my shoulders before? I felt like I was going to die -- I knew I was going to die -- but even with that realization, I knew that screaming and crying wouldn’t help me. 

I felt oddly calm, like the worst had already happened, thinking back to it now, I don’t wonder if I was still pretty groggy from that bump on my head. And anyway, it wouldn’t do to have you thinking I was clawing at the walls, losing my mind in there. 

Although I did do some of that. 

In between the waves of panicking, a cold, clear voice in the back of my head said to me: _Think. Think. Think._

I had to get out. 

_Don’t think about how you got here. Think about how you’re getting out._

After a minute or two of consideration, I brought my legs up to my chest and pressed my feet against the wood the coffin. With all my might, I banged against the wood with my feet and hands, praying that it would crack. At first, it seemed like it would hold, and I would kill myself for nothing -- but finally, after one last push, my foot broke through the wood and I scrambled back, letting the dirt fall into the smashed end of wall. I pulled my undershirt off and tied it around my nose and mouth, and got out of that damned coffin. 

I had been buried in a shallow grave -- not, I think, six feet deep. 

But crawling out of it was exhausting, suffocating work. At times, I thought the ground would shift and I would simply be crushed. But I kept going, I kept -- I knew I had to get out. The closer I got to the surface, the wetter the dirt felt, until I broke through what was basically a well of mud. It was one of those sudden, hard Southern rainstorms that battered the land for half an hour or two and then was quickly gone. I pulled the sodden, dirt-streaked undershirt from my face and took long, deep breaths of air. Never had I felt more grateful -- if I had been a religious man, I would have praised Jesus, as it was, I thanked whoever was responsible for my miraculous rescue. 

As I gradually regained my senses, I realized that there was a lot shouting people around me. I looked up to see them, all dressed in black, starring back at me in various attitudes of horror. Many of them were weeping, some of them were holding on to each other. It seemed that I had interrupted a funeral. 

Hold that thought. I looked down, and saw the somewhere along the way, I had lost my boxers.

It seemed that I interrupted a funeral, naked. 

* 

The sheriff didn’t know whether to charge me for public indecency or get me to a hospital. In the end, I was handcuffed to my hospital bed, and no one, not even the one sympathetic nurse (who reminded me of my mother -- not that I called her that -- when I wasn’t out of my head, anyway) -- no one would tell me what had happened, or where Joy was. 

But after a while of working on the kindly nurse -- whose name was Maritza, who was better than a mother to me, being a born gossip and generous with her pain meds -- after seeing that I wouldn’t fall into shock, she told me what was happening. 

Everything had gone to hell while I was in the grave. First of all, the funeral I interrupted had to be delayed when the gravediggers, the funeral director and the pastor all got into a loud argument over who had messed up where when it seemed as if there was no grave to bury old Mister Pitkins in. The gravediggers swore that they had finished digging the grave the night before but the next day, the grave was already filled in. They were debating whether the gravediggers had to paid to dig up the grave again when -- 

“Well, you know,” the nurse said and I nodded, and massaged the back of my neck. 

Then someone set the old Merritt place on fire! John Merritt’s whereabouts were initially unknown -- but then he had been found in the next town over, at a friend’s place. Most seemed to think it was he who was set the blaze. Henry -- yes, that Henry, the one I had come to town to find -- had been seen in all his usual haunts by the usual people. They reported that he looked different, although not in a way that was easy to pin down. 

He, like John, had disappeared, in the hours after the fire. Unlike John, however, he didn’t turn up in the next town over.

And Joy? 

Well, Joy I saw with my own two eyes a day later. She carried in a bouquet of daisies into my hospital room and put them in the vase on the side table. She looked cast-down, but if anything more fetching in her black dress and veil. A string of pearls gleamed around her neck, like bared teeth. The painkillers they had put me on make it seem like there were two of her, dancing slightly in front of me. I blinked, and she resolved into a singular being. 

I was still massaging my wrist -- the damn sheriff had finally decided that, technically, I hadn’t done anything wrong and had taken the cuffs away. I felt sore and pissed and I glared at Joy, like she was to all to blame. 

She asked me how I felt. 

“Like a day-old corpse,” I said, tartly. She nodded, her face pale. 

I gestured to her outfit. “Going to another funeral?” 

“I just got back from one. Henry’s,” she said softly, and I could see then that she wore her wedding ring on her slim right hand. It was a plain gold band, nothing fancy, but it looked right on her hand. 

I wanted to start laughing but I swallowed the impulse. No need to get myself in more trouble. “What happened?” 

“A single gunshot wound to the head,” she said composedly. “Andy tells me that it’s likely to be ruled a suicide.”

“Joy…” I said, softly. 

She looked up at me, her eyes dark and full of meaning. 

She went on with a sigh. “Well, what can you do? Henry came back into town, after years away. He thought he was going to mend fences with his wife -- with me -- only to find out she’s in the arms of another man. That’s you. And. Well. He went into a tailspin. All his old friends wouldn’t recognize him anymore, or wouldn’t speak to him. I hear little Lisa Cleery cleared off to her auntie’s place, when she heard he was back. He was an outcast, a persona non grata. All that would drive anyone to take their life.” 

She didn’t look too broken up about it. Maybe she had mourned for Henry a long time ago. Or maybe she didn’t feel the need to mourn for him in the first place. 

Quietly, I said, “It’s a neat story. But why’d you have to do that to me?” 

“I didn’t,” she said, with a fierce look in her eyes. “I swear to God, I didn’t. I heard the door and woke up. I was dying for a smoke -- I had a pack in the car and -- well, when I came back, you were gone. I thought -- well, I thought you’d left me like he did, sharing the same name and all.” 

“Without my clothes? Without my wallet? What happened to my car, for God’s sake?” 

“They were gone too. Andy found your car running by the side of the road a few days ago.” 

I shuddered, thinking of what would have happened if Henry Sinclair hadn’t had that sudden attack of conscience. He’d get to the city, a new name and new identity. Hell, he wouldn’t even have to answer to a different name. It would have been easy… 

I leaned back against my pillow and closed my eyes. “Thank you.” 

“For what?” she said. 

I felt a light brush of lips against my cheek. Joy’s voice murmured in my ear, a sweet whisper that melted into nothing. “Be good,” she said. “And get well soon.” 

Joy was on her way out the door when I heard a new voice, calling her name. I opened my eyes in time to see an older woman, with dark hair streaked with white, come over and embraced her. She was well-dressed, her face cut like a cameo. I knew who she was, of course. 

Virginia Naismith. The client. I’d seen her coming out of the boss’ office often enough. 

She looked over at me and smiled. It was a sharp smile, outlined in red. 

“I want to thank you for your hard work, Mr. Jorgensen,” she said, her voice like cut glass. 

“I’m sorry about Henry,” I said looking at her, at the way her arm went around Joy’s waist. “I didn’t know you two knew each other.” 

“We didn’t until a few days ago. Now we’re fast friends,” said Miss Naismith. 

“Miss Naismith thinks there might be some opportunities for me. Abroad, I mean,” Joy said. 

“I’m sure,” I said. 

Joy kissed me goodbye again -- Miss Naismith shook my hand. I watched as they went down the hall, hand-in-hand, and from my window, overlooking the hospital parking lot -- I watched them drive off in a gleaming red car, shining and new. 

I felt melancholy at losing Joy, of course, but then again, I thought with an irrepressible feeling of cheerfulness, I was probably better off this way. 

*

I drove out of town a few days later, with a promise from the sheriff and his deputy that I would never come back there again. I never intended to. I drove to the city and went to my tiny apartment to pick up a few things -- and make a phone call. 

“Gladys?” 

“Henry? You’re alive?” 

“Don’t sound so disappointed. I just wanted to say goodbye.” 

“Look, I’ll talk to the boss, he’ll let you back in, for sure. For better or worse, you did find your guy…” 

“I didn’t find him, he found me. But look, I’m never going to be a good detective. Thinking I could -- it was kid stuff. It’s all right.” 

“What are you gonna do now?” 

“Don’t know. Get in my car and drive, I guess.” 

“That sounds nice,” Gladys said, sound a little wistful. “Of course, I’d hate it, being stuck in the car with you.” 

“Yeah, I figured,” I said with a laugh. “Goodbye, Gladys. Say goodbye to the boss for me, and the fellas. Tell ‘em thank you for me. I needed the career change.” 

“Sure, sure. Goodbye, Henry.” 

“Bye.” 

* 

And so I went off to the next adventure. But I never forgot about Joy. 

 

Or Henry, for that matter.


End file.
